


Schemes and Circus Crowds

by cruisedirector



Category: Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Alternate Universe - Ancient Rome, Canon - TV, Community: contrelamontre, Dialogue Heavy, Episode Related, Episode: s02e05 Amok Time, Episode: s02e14 Bread and Circuses, Friendship, M/M, Male Friendship, POV Third Person Limited, Prison, Repression, Secrets, Vulcan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-02-28
Updated: 2003-02-28
Packaged: 2017-10-03 10:04:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cruisedirector/pseuds/cruisedirector
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>McCoy watches Spock pace in their cell in the Roman prison.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Schemes and Circus Crowds

**Author's Note:**

> Bones insisted that I write this even though I had pushed it aside to do something else for this week's contrelamontre challenge, which required the opening line of this story. I cheated a little and checked the dialogue transcripts but they're not terribly accurate so most of the episodes were reconstructed from memory. Paramount owns the lines lifted directly from "Bread and Circuses" and "Amok Time."

Even watching him felt like being a voyeur. McCoy regarded Spock cautiously as he paced their tiny cell. Spock struggled with the wall, the door, anything that might give him a way out...a way to Jim. Not that Spock would ever admit that finding the captain concerned him more than getting back to the ship.

Vulcans might, in theory, be free from such impulses, but Spock was only partly Vulcan, and McCoy had been observing him for far too long not to understand what drove him. Maybe it was wrong to assume that, like a human, a half-Vulcan would need to express those feelings, but McCoy had seen the damage that repression could cause -- headaches and sleeplessness were only the beginning.

"Angry, Mr. Spock?" he asked as Spock slammed the bars. "Or frustrated perhaps?"

"Such emotions are foreign to me, Doctor," Spock predictably replied. "I am merely testing the strength of the door."

"For the fifteenth time."

The other man had risked his own life to save McCoy's. It was what Jim Kirk expected, and Spock would have done it for any crewmember, but that didn't change the fact that Spock had done it for _him_. McCoy owed him proper thanks, but moreover he owed him whatever consolation he could offer.

"Spock, I know we've had our disagreements," he began. "Maybe they're jokes, I don't know. As Jim says, we're not often sure ourselves sometimes, but what I'm trying to say is..."

Exasperation radiated from the non-emotional one -- utterly human, very nearly childish. "Doctor, I am seeking a means of escape. Will you please be brief?"

"Well, what I'm trying to say is, you saved my life in the arena," continued McCoy, but Spock interrupted him again.

"Yes, that's quite true." Smug and unflappable, with a cocked eyebrow. A warning, perhaps, for Spock knew as well as McCoy that his fighting skills weren't what this conversation was about. The doctor played along with the expected terms of their dispute:

"I'm trying to thank you, you pointed-eared hobgoblin!"

"Oh, yes. You humans have that emotional need to express gratitude. 'You're welcome,' I believe, is the correct response." That was pure Spock, "you humans," as if he couldn't simply accept appreciation from McCoy in the spirit in which it was given the way he readily accepted it from their captain. "However, Doctor, you must remember that I am entirely motivated by logic. The loss of our ship's surgeon, whatever I think of his skills, would mean a reduction in the efficiency of the Enterprise..."

McCoy was remembering the look on Spock's face on the day he discovered that he had not killed Jim in that blasted Vulcan mating ritual. His smile had lit up sickbay. The doctor had felt like a voyeur then, too, as he watched his two best friends holding each other, gazing at one another in limitless joy. But then Kirk had explained about the neural paralyzer McCoy had given him to simulate death, and Spock had turned a look of such gratitude on McCoy that he had felt his chest swell. Though Spock had said only, "Indeed."

Whatever Spock thought of his skills...indeed. "Do you know why you're not afraid of dying, Spock?" McCoy hissed. "You're more afraid of living. Every day you stay alive is one more day you might slip -- and let your human half peek out." He watched the words strike home. "That's it, isn't it? Insecurity! You wouldn't know what to do with a genuine warm, decent feeling..."

"Really, Doctor?" Spock said quietly.

And McCoy remembered the rest of the conversation with Jim in sickbay after the Kal-if-fee. He had suggested that when Spock first saw Kirk alive, he had been on the verge of giving them an emotional scene that would have brought the house down. "Merely my quite logical relief that Starfleet had not lost a highly proficient captain," Spock had demurred. And Jim had merely smiled at them both and suggested that he and Spock go mind the store together.

Jim could always hear what Spock wasn't saying. So could McCoy. Still.

"I know," he told the Vulcan. "I'm worried about Jim, too." Spock said nothing; he didn't have to. McCoy could see in the dark eyes that his gesture had been noted and appreciated. He dropped his gaze.


End file.
